"Monster"

Charlize Theron pours herself into the body and mind of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Patty Jenkins' devastating directing debut.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Dec 25, 2003 | What do actors do, really? Those of us who go to the movies with any regularity recognize, subconsciously or otherwise, that there are all sorts of ways for actors to engage us. Sometimes we want them to be a set of molecules that dissolve before our very eyes, leaving nothing but an imprint of pure character on the screen. Other times we're perfectly happy to acknowledge that what we're watching up there is, say, Julia Roberts filling in for a character -- which is not to say she's not acting, but that her Julia Roberts-ness is so inextinguishable that it can't be divorced from her craft.

In "Monster," Patty Jenkins' sharply made and shattering debut, Charlize Theron -- carrying an extra 25 pounds and wearing dental prosthetics -- plays a fictionalized version of real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who was convicted of six murders in 1992 and was executed in Florida in 2002. Part of the impact of Theron's performance may lie in the fact that, for the movie's first half hour or so, we're working hard to find Theron inside the character of Aileen.

We've all heard about the weight gain and the prosthetics, and yet it's still hard to believe that this Aileen -- an imposing woman whose meaty, confident stride is a pronounced counterpoint to the disgruntled desperation on her face -- has any link whatsoever to the willowy Theron we know. Whether we've walked into the theater believing that the extra weight and the prosthetics are no more than trickery, or that they're symbols of dedication that must surely result in a great performance, we all know that the dazzling blond movie star is in there somewhere.

But where is she?

Eventually, we do find Theron inside Aileen, in a small flicker of the eyelids or in the way she laughs after tossing off, coltishly, a nervous little joke. But the real wonder of the performance isn't that we forget it's Charlize Theron we're watching; it's our realization that she has put herself completely in the service of her character -- given herself over to be used, subsumed. This is different from Nicole Kidman's strapping on a putty proboscis to portray the great authoress Virginia Nose. Theron has mastered the carriage and the speech patterns to play Aileen Wuornos (or more specifically, the fictionalized Wuornos of this movie), and with the prosthetics, she has the right all-around look. But it takes more than actorly craft to be able to pour yourself, as she does, into the body and mind of a person none of us would want to be. It's as if she's liquefied her own soul.

While we all know that great performances can happen in mediocre, or even bad, movies, it probably doesn't hurt Theron, or her costar, Christina Ricci (who gives her best performance in years), that there's a markedly intelligent sensibility behind "Monster." Jenkins, who also wrote the script, doesn't attempt to turn Wuornos into a misunderstood feminist hero, or even to portray her as a victim wronged by the system. The real-life Wuornos had been sexually abused as a child and became a prostitute at age 13. As an adult, she was a drifter who made a living for herself as a highway hooker, and she claimed that some or all of the seven murders she confessed to (she was eventually convicted of six of those) had been committed in self-defense.

But Jenkins is less interested in Wuornos' innocence or guilt than she is in probing the humanity of a person capable of committing such nakedly inhumane acts. She shows us the first murder as a clear act of self-defense: Aileen has been picked up by a john. He knocks her out and, after she's come to, proceeds to brutalize her. ("Do you want to live till you die?" he hisses at her at he goes about his business.) Jenkins handles the rape with incredible skillfulness, minimizing the sensationalism of it while preserving its horror. Although it's not particularly graphic, it's difficult and affecting to watch: After the rape and the murder it incites, the sight of Theron's Aileen, stumbling and bloodied, still coming down from the peak of her rage, has all the intensity of Greek tragedy.

The first murder is simultaneously brutal and sensible, a necessary act and a cathartic one, and Jenkins lures us into thinking that "Monster" might be a vigilante movie, one in which Wuornos stands in for all women who have been wronged. But the subsequent murders are very different in tone, both from the first one and from one another. Each has a specific mood and character, and Jenkins stages them so you feel the weight of the dying men's suffering -- it doesn't matter that some of them have treated Aileen badly and others (like the one played by the astonishing Scott Wilson, who begs for his life) have been extraordinarily kind to her. In the end, there's a sameness to human suffering that defies our perceived right to decide whether or not it's deserved.

Jenkins, wisely, never turns Wuornos into a symbol of anything. And in that respect, "Monster" is resolutely feminist: It acknowledges Wuornos' victimization without simplistically treating it as the root of her psychopathology. In Jenkins' view, deranged or not -- and the evidence suggests that she was -- Wuornos is responsible for her own actions. At the end of the movie, when Aileen is convicted, she rails at the judge, asking him how he could do this to a "raped woman." But the scene isn't played to make us feel that Wuornos' acts were justified in any way. Rather, it's a desperately sad giveaway as to how she defines herself when the chips are down -- that is, when she's not wielding the false power of a gun.

"Monster" is a compassionate picture without any obvious agenda. And it's effective precisely because it's not a polemic. This isn't an overtly anti-death-penalty statement, although the central question it asks -- how do we respond to any human being who's lonely or in pain? -- leads us straight into the questionable morality of capital punishment. Instead, Jenkins recasts Wuornos' story as a haunting romantic tragedy, and the device works, because we all know how susceptible we are to love: Doesn't it follow that love can expose the vulnerabilities of even a serial killer?

Next Page: Tender moments in a killer's career: Making love to "Crimson and Clover," roller-skating to "Don't Stop Believin'"

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